Thursday, February 7th, 2008

Sometimes the lovely sharon and I happen to teach the same subject in the same day. Its inevitable. However, sometimes the similarities are weird. The other day the lovely sharon was talking about her lesson to sixth form about fats and oils, alkene chemistry. How strange that I was also teaching the exact same topic to my sixth form, and we were both focusing on the health issues. But the differences in our lessons were rather strange. One lesson was for the lovely sharon. She learnt that she is middle class.

There are oils that are not so healthy (saturated) and there are oils that are healthy healthier (unsaturated). Then there are oils which are very bad… the TRANS FATS (***flicker lights, play scary music***). Saturated fats tend to be found in animal fats, unsaturated fats tend to be found in vegetable oil. Trans fats are found when we try to manufacture a substance that is butter-like but made out of vegetable fats; margarine. Trans fats are bad. So the story is that for a decade or so we thought butter was bad and margarine was a good alternative but is turns out that the butter may have been a better choice. Although oilve oil seems to be best. Unless you try and make margarine out of it…TRANS FATS (***deep voice***WO HA HA HA).

So the lovely sharon had a lesson on the wonderful chemistry of fats and oils. She even had props. Enter prop one; olive oil. “This is olive oil, the oil we all cook with.” blank faces. “What Oil?” “Olive what?” Confusion. “We don’t cook with that!” The lovely sharon was confused. “Well what do you cook with?”….”Lard”…..”Lard”.. …”oil”…..”Lard”…. .”dunno”…..”Lard”… ..”chippy oil”…..”Lard”…..”dunno”…..”Lard”… ..”chippy oil”…..”Lard”..

I wish I could say I was impressed with my own students as I did my own survey in my parallel world lesson. In my class lesson … “do you use butter or margarine?”. . . “dunno”. . . “dunno”. . . “whatever is in the fridge and is yellow”. . . “dunno”. . . “dunno”. . . . . “dunno”. . . “whatever is in the fridge and is yellow”. . . . . “dunno”. . . .whatever is in the fridge and is yellow”. . . “dunno”. . . “dunno”. . . “dunno”. . . “dunno”. . .